I find the emphasis on understanding the phonetic basis of written language interesting, as, of course, a large proportion of the world's population learns to read a language without phonetic elements (my recollection is that age to literacy is similar regardless of the conceptual underpinnings of the written language, and that comparative studies on the effect of different systems on later cognition found no difference, but I'm very far from being an expert on that.)

I've never heard any linguists say anything good about teaching "phonics" either. That said, written English is totally straightforward, and nobody should have any trouble with it if they speak Latin (both early and modern), Greek, Old French, Anglo-Saxon (Proto-Germanic would probably help), Middle English, Anglo-French, some old Scandinavian languages (medieval Danish is probably very helpful), a bunch of Celtic languages if you care about place names. There will still probably be another 1000-3000 words in your vocabulary that would be easier to spell if you knew yet more languages, of course. But really, after all that, the spelling of about 95% of English words should make total sense!